Simply not true.
You think Aisam ul Haq will become Roger Federer simply by playing aggressive tennis shots?
The biggest myth being peddled on this forum is that Babar is as talented as Kohli, Inzimam > Tendulkar , Ahmed Shehzad > Tendulkar is because fans ACTUALLY BELIEVE that Shezzy, Babar or Inzimam were as good as Kohli and Tendulkar.
The players have a ceiling and no amount of aggressive mindset can change the BASIC SKILLS of a player.
You MUST HAVE A PRIMARY ATTRIBUTE OR SKILLSET. YOU work around that skillset or attribute to IMPROVE it and along the way you gain confidence, perfection and attitude. And finally the mindset changes to aggression.
A case right in front of you is the spinner Shadab who pretends he is the most aggressive all rounder EVER and averages 42 with the ball and 10 with the bat for last 1 year.
Do you think he doesnt want to bowl like Warne?
How has aggression treated him in being the best spinner or batsmen?
Nada.
Zilch.
He is simply not good enough to land 2 balls in same place.
Similarly, Babar, Rizwan and Imam ALL WANT TO HIT 6 OF EVERY BALL.
Who wouldnt?
Every player who plays wants to score a goal, hit a winner on every shot or hit a 6 off every delivery.
But only few players become ELITE STRIKERS, even fewer win Grand Slams, and even fewer become ATGs of the game like Kohli.
Only test of fire makes fine steel they say.
But if you put mud in the fire its only going to be smoke and ashes.
I have never compared Babar's
greatness and
caliber with any of the batting greats, past and present, ever, and I never said aggressive mindset will make a player an ATG/GOAT. Being Timid however DOES result in a performance below the ceiling hence aggression will take them up closer to their ceiling.
It is ludicrous to compare Babar with Kohli for example, 2 completely different players and mindsets. I don't even compare statistics, because I firmly believe it is not the number of runs or wickets you take that make you a great, it is when you score the runs and when you take the wickets that make you a great. Sanath Jayasuriya has MORE ODI wickets than Shane Warne, does this make Sanath a better ODI bowler than Warne? No, absolutely not. Inzi's innings in the 1992 SF vs NZ was probably the best WC ODI innings I have seen by a Pakistani and it was a mere score of 60.
The majority of fans these days were raised on T20, they have no idea of what pacing an innings actually means which is why they are expecting boundaries every single ball. Plus aggression is part of the solution for Pakistan, not the full solution. We have seen a thread on how aggressive Australia are by hitting the most number of 6s in the 1-10 PP phase in ODIs 2023, yet Australia have lost 6 out of 7 games vs India in 2023, more than half of ODIs played in India.
No one can sit here and say the likes of Babar are talentless players, but because of their love for T20, they want Babar to smash sixes around the park, when he is clearly an accumulator.
Pakistan's approach to batting, be it setting a target, or chasing a score, doesn't just boil down to the ceiling of players - which can be mitigated by having a balanced team and positive mindset - but rather how they approach RR.
I can double dog guarantee that before Pakistan walked out to bat this morning they had a 6 RR in their mind because 300+ was their target. We saw a lot of overs today with singles and then a boundary, across 1 or 2 overs, which is why for the most part before the collapse the RR fluctuated between 5 and 6, but Pakistan always take the RR literally rather than holistically, which simply means, once a wicket falls, and the RR falls, Pakistan get out trying to maintain the literal rate of 6 runs per over, AND try to play catch up on lost runs, rather than keep calm and aim for the holistic RR which could mean anything from thrashing the PP then strike rotation to a 300+ score.
Look at every other team like Australia, India, England, New Zealand, and even SA, they all aim for a holistic RR.
Pakistan's main problem? Pakistan play the calculation, not the situation, which is precisely why the key to ODI/Test batting is knowing when to accelerate (which requires aggression) and when to decelerate (which requires patience) a batting innings.
He didn't say it was a concern. He said it was the REASON they believed they could stage a come back which they did.
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